So your goal is to create an item(in any way shape or form) that players will want to use and keep on them that is useful. That is the first step. This item must be useful enough to players that they actually use it in favor of current items however. So creating a new artifact weapon that is cursed that people just simply won't use is not going to work. Something people will carry in their packs because they need it. Not because they happen to have one.

One item is also lame in this aproach. A group of items would be a necessary addition to really do some good.

Allow me to create a scenario:

A dungeon is created that requires keys throughout the dungeon in order to proceed to different levels or different areas. The way these keys are obtained is not important. What is important is they are stealable. They keys are consumable so you cannot carry multiple copies. If thieves steal your key you have to kill them to get it back as the key will not respawn until the thief leaves the area or a time limit is met. Say an hour or so. This gives a chase and a prize.

This is a good start but there needs to be a little more. Incentive for the thief is the chase in most cases. Another incentive could be the thief returns the key to it's point of creation or even an NPC fence. He receives some reward for this action. Money, items, fame...whatever. A new title or prestige something or another could be created. The sky is the limit. The point is making another reward in addition to the chase to create more incentive.

I've done my best to give an example of what type of thing could be made that removes insurance from the equation while still creating a chase and reward scenario that a thief might be interested in. This scenario require one of two addition components as well. It would need to be in felucca or it would need to be in a newly created trammel-like facet where thief would turn gray to blues and be attackable. The latter scenario would cause problems as there would be so many thieves packing said dungeon it would crash.

Again, I realize that you cannot please all the thieves out there and this is not going to make disarm thieves happy. Nor will you make Rico happy as he wants to be able to steal goza mats. (Couldn't help it. It was funny) Until you create a set of weapons people have to use that can be disarmed and stolen you will not please a large group of thieves. It's important to realize what is realistic and what is not however. The above is realistic in a current felucca environment.

Like it or leave it I have tried to help create a scenario for a class I do not like but had an idea that was worth mentioning. Expand on it or pick it apart but don't expect me to defend it as I've expended all the energy I'm going to on the subject.

I don't like the idea of thieves being able to control access to an area. That definitely would be abuseable. One easy abuse would be to have a group of stealth thieves invisi-blocking whatever door the key opens. What would be the odds of making it through 5+ theives to open a door without getting the key stolen? You can't cover a key with items vs the KR client, so your only hope would be to run through the area with a key on your cursor and hope no one gets it right before you go through the door.

I also don't like the idea of disarmable, stealable weapons. If that's what it takes to make a majority of thieves happy, I guess they should just be sad. Disarm/stealing was one of the most abuseable game mechanics in UO history. I often went against vastly unbalanced odds (1 vs 8, etc) and won by abusing that game mechanic. I've won 1 on 8 fights where I started the fight naked by abusing that game mechanic. re-introducing disarm/stealing would be a HUGE step backwards for UO game balance.

I was just reading a thread complaining about consumables. It got me thinking that if there were craftable consumables that required rare resources to make, that would a great addition for thieves. I would definitely make rare consumables uninsureable.

I could see these consumables coming from a number of possible places such as

Alchemy using peerless resources and other boss drops.
Drops from bosses
Charged items crafted by crafting skills and charged using imbuing
Zone drops (kinda like how virtue dungeon drops work)

Then maybe you guys should start a thread on the Thieves Forums that specifically outlines the kind of "realistic" things you would like to see added to the game for your class.

Insurance isn't going away anytime soon so that settles that. No point beating that dead horse. The alternative to that is to play Siege (yes Rico, I know YOU play there ).

Stealing from monsters clearly wasn't added for PvP thieves. It simply gives thieves an alternative way of making money, of gaining skills other than by stealing the same dye tubs/pile of golds from a packhorse and having a unique set of items for which there will be sustained demand as they are consumables.

The "bone" for PvP thieves AND PvPers in general came first by making the SoTs cursed unlike the 105s that aren't. Second by providing an incentive to not only do all the Fel champ spawns in the no choke areas, but Harrowers as well. So you should have plenty of people to run into.

As far as adding stealable artifacts on monsters, considering the timer is only what? 12 seconds? the drop rate would have to be insanely (infuriatingly?) low to prevent items from flooding the market within days.

If we're going to "throw you a bone", I'd rather it be a meaty one. Just be clear about what you want and reasonably realistic about it.

The line in the sand has been drawn. The developers are calling us out. Sure they are acting as if we have never asked to be un-nerfed over the last few years, but let's pretend we haven't.

I want ideas. Ideas that can be used on all shards. The key is...insurance. Leave it alone, they won't touch it...we'd love to see it go away, but realistically, we know it won't change, so leave that one off the table.

Hire someone on the developer team who has actual experience playing a PvP thief. Over the years there have been developers who have had experience in PvP, but I can't recall a single developer who was a regular thief. Having someone who has played the game from our perspective would be a huge plus....la

VIPStratics Veteran

This item must be useful enough to players that they actually use it in favor of current items however. So creating a new artifact weapon that is cursed that people just simply won't use is not going to work. Something people will carry in their packs because they need it. Not because they happen to have one.

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Correct. Non-Consumable Cursed items really benefit no one as nobody wishes to use them in Felucca. However, if it is something they "need" rather than merely something that would be "beneficial" to carry, you will probably go back to square one - they still won't use it in Felucca.

A dungeon is created that requires keys throughout the dungeon in order to proceed to different levels or different areas. The way these keys are obtained is not important. What is important is they are stealable. They keys are consumable so you cannot carry multiple copies. If thieves steal your key you have to kill them to get it back as the key will not respawn until the thief leaves the area or a time limit is met. Say an hour or so. This gives a chase and a prize.

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While your idea has merit, I can tell you right away this wouldn't work if only for the fact this becomes game stopping. This would give a handful of people the power to completely shut everyone else out of an entire area/system. Players would try it a few times, get pissed then not bother with it altogether. (I won't even talk about the number of angry threads this would generate on UHall ).

The problem with PvP stealing is there is no simple way of adding unique goodies for thieves that will not either be too easy to exploit/farm or cause so much grief that the uproar will force us to nerf it to oblivion.

You are correct in saying it has to be something players will want to carry around for a certain amount of time but that should it be stolen, it wouldn't be too devastating of a loss. Such an item was originally planned for the champ spawns. It was a cursed consumable (no, not a potion!) with a timer on it which the longer the players carried it around while working the spawn, the more potent the consumable became. And it would reach its max potency once the timer expired. If the player allowed the timer to expire without having the item on him in champ spawn area, then the consumable would only have the base potency. That specific item was removed for various reasons, but something along those lines may yet pop up in game at some point.

Bottomline, adding new contents for pvp thieves is touchy. I know a lot of thieves miss the old disarm stealing days. These will not return, especially now because of changes which led to insurance. Something like the proposed scenario might work with some tweaks in the context of an event, but not as permanent content. So what you may see is more items/consumables pop up in Felucca that have the capacity be stolen even if only for a short period of time (such as the SoTs and Replicas) but not necessarily thief specific content as those will mostly be aimed at PvM thieves.

Re-introduction of grey status, for thieves. Here is an old post I made about this issue...awhile back. Of course it was ignored, but this thread is for suggested changes to help the thief profession...

One suggestion I would like to make, and hope you might consider. To add some fun to our playing time as thieves. Would you look at the possibility of reinstating "grey status" for thieves? This may seem like something we wouldn't want, but to be honest, the fun we had in the game was based on the chase. Now that there are minimal reasons for players to chase after thieves...they really don't bother. If we were given back grey status, at least we might be able to have the famed "noto" return.

Eliminate items that aren't stealable. If an item isn't insured or blessed, or too heavy to be stolen. Make these items stealable. Simple things like blackrock or other event items (coins) have never been stealable. Make them something we can steal.

On this issue. eliminate blessed items. On the production shards, they can be blessed, on Siege, there is no reason for blessings outside of the "Siege bless"...la

You are correct in saying it has to be something players will want to carry around for a certain amount of time but that should it be stolen, it wouldn't be too devastating of a loss.

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Sorry, but there is nothing special that needs to be created for thieves. Just make eveything stealable, and allow us to pick what we want to take. If a goza mat is what will get a player to chase me...I'll take it. If it's a sword I've stolen, so be it. There is no reason to make us special items...we have a pretty good idea what will and what won't lead to a chase...la

Allow a thief with the proper disarm skill, select an armor item to attempt to take off a player. If it's unblessed and it's is successfully disarmed...it should be able to be stolen. Maybe put a timer on the amount of armor disarms can be allowed (to prevent thieves from striping our marks completely), but at least this would open up some items we have never been able to steal before.

On this note, put back the abiltiy to disarm steal players shields. For the short time we were able to do this, was a lot of fun. You could even allow spellbooks to be disarmed. If a player is too slow to re-arm the spell book before we are able to disarm the shield...we should have the chance to take the shield as our own. This isn't a request to get spell books stealable (even though it would be nice). Just because you have an item in your hands, should not prevent all chances to disarm and then steal any item...la

VIPStratics Veteran

I'm not sure why grey status was removed from thieves. I'll have to find out what the reasoning was behind that. I'm still the newbie on the team so I have quite a bit of catching up to do! But I concur, it was great chasing down notorious thieves on sight.

As far as insured/blessed/non-stealable items go, we normally avoid blessing items for Siege but in some cases, there is no way around it as the only way for the item to work as intended is if it is blessed (normally items that are triggered upon death).

Again, disarm stealing is a huge can of worms I do not really see being re-implemented on production shards. There might be a very slim possibility on Siege but still, no guarantees... A single ability shouldn't make an entire template useless. I still remember the old days of server down Buc's Den free for all where a single disarm thief would put half the dexxers out of commission in minutes. You can easily go fetch another GM weapon in your bank, but can't say the same about higher end gear.

I could see this happening in a controlled environment, say a specific dungeon/area with objectives to be completed. But not overland... I understand you're saying only the uninsured items, but I can also see all the bugs, loopholes and exploits that could stem from that. This will need to be discussed with the team.

I understand there were issues with thieves talking marks into putting blessed items into pouches to steal them, but come on...that should just be chalked up to a learning lesson to players. Keep blessed items in your top pack and they are still blessed. If a thief can steal containers, there woould be a bunch more items we would be able to take...bags of sending...etc...la

I really shouldn't waste time on this, but let's consider it the last shot...

1) Apply insurance mechanics to thieves. If a pk kills a character he gets insurance money. If a thief steals an insured item he should get insurance money for that item. If a pk kills somebody that has no money in his bank account his items gets uninsured. If a thief steals an insured item from sombody who has no money in his bank account the item should should become uninsured. I never understood why the insurance mechanics would apply to pks but not thieves.

2) Peerless keys et similia located in fel; why are they blessed? They should be cursed.

3) So much blessed stuff around that really has no need to be so. BODs, BOD books, quest items, etc...

4) Stealing containers (letting all the blessed/insured stuff in it drop into the owner's backpack). That would have been nice before BoS were nerfed. Now it would be decent for stealing pop boxes. It would also appease a big part of the "nerf boxes" crowd.

5) Let random steal target only stealable items. If I random steal someone I can accept that I won't be able to steal his blessed/insured stuff, but also getting 9/10 times the "you can't steal that" message because it targeted an unstealable item is just ridicoulous.

6) Items obtained in fel should have a temporized "cursed" tag which should decrement only if the item is in fel, and in a player's pack, and outside houses. In this way if you want to sell an item got into fel you have to STAY in fel time enough for people to steal/kill for it. Note that after the timer goes to 0 the cursed status should be eliminated, so that the item can be freely used. BUT you had to RISK it for some time (one-three days). Besides that would be a nice job for side templates.My ninja-tracker would rejoice hunting afk hiders burning cursing time. A whole new dimension to exploration...

7) Allow people to be able to steal from stacks heavier than 12 stones. Currently if I have, let's say a stack of gold heavier than 12 stones I always fail to steal from it, even though I should be able to steal at least a fraction of it (lighter than 12 stones). That's just another unfixed bug...

EDIT:
8) FIX the blasted disguise kits. Currently if you apply them you can't remove them in ANY way for two full game hours, not even dying. And in the mean time you can't change into ANY form. And god help you if you happen to crash or logout during those two hours, your macros get messed up for good. That really makes disguise useless.

And whatever you do:

FIX STEALTH. A skillful char with GM snooping (not stealing, but snooping, the sign of a pvp thief) and well versed in the game mechanics should never be revealed by people who do not invest in detect. Doesn't matter if you do that by reintrodicing step counting or allowing snooping targets three tiles away or whatever, but any change you do to buff thieves is in vain if they can't snoop targets.

I'm not sure why grey status was removed from thieves. I'll have to find out what the reasoning was behind that. I'm still the newbie on the team so I have quite a bit of catching up to do! But I concur, it was great chasing down notorious thieves on sight.

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Most likely it was eliminated to give thieves "a bone" after the doom fiasco. I don't mind reinstating the permagray for thieves, provided it is possible only for GM detectives to say a thief from non-thief before the supposed thief is attacked. While chasing notorious thieves on sight is good, the camouflage part of playing a thief is nice too (disguise kits and incognito, anyone?) so nobody should know that char XXX is a thief until he is attacked (again, provided no detectives are around).

Oh, let's add a point to the list above:

8) FIX the blasted disguise kits. Currently if you apply them you can't remove them in ANY way for two full game hours, not even dying. And in the mean time you can't change into ANY form, polymorph, necro form, or ninja form. And god help you if you happen to crash or logout during those two hours, your macros get messed up for good. That really makes disguise useless.

Fix the bug that messes up players macros when they use the disguise kit. This has been a problem for years. Even though there is a known way to correct the problem, there should not be this problem and should not have to be fixed by the players...la

Stratics VeteranAlumni

On GL almost every pack I see has quest items, heavy stacks of resources, and certain containers. Letting us steal these would be a nice chunky bone...one that we used to already have.

I think, as mentioned above, the weight limit bug is the most debilitating. I see stacks of 2k silver, but cant even steal a single stone worth of it. Consumables are stack able now, allowing us the chance to make nice grabs on high value resources (enchanted apples, smoke bombs, pots).

There are big balance issues in UO right now with the pot chugging and the pop boxes. Allowing us to steal these 30-40 stone stacks of pots (if only at a max of 12 at a time) and said boxes would not only offer a method to balance it, but also give us something valuable to steal. I could go to Yew gate and get a keg worth of pots in a little over 2 minutes. Not bad.

It would also give room for thieves in combat. I've shown up at faction battles to help my comrades before, only to have the mages grab 30-stone stacks of regs to thwart my efforts. Or to have some bum carrying 200 enhanced bandages at a time. Bah, I say!

BODs, BODs, BODs. I see so many afk-scripting mules with 100 BODs in their pack, and I can't touch them. Why? Less BOD scripters (most do it in fel to avoid being paged on), less high-end runics, means less high end items flooding the market. Win, win, win. Oh, and a nice profit for thieves. Win.

As far as passive reveal...I don't think its too bad. Maybe a bonus at 110 or 120 stealth. But at 85 stealth you SHOULD be getting revealed quite often. Hell, they already gave us auto-stealth, which sort of made the skill over powered.

Also, I'd like my steal to do a theft pass/fail check BEFORE the NPC's get me guardwhacked...but thats a whole 'nother story.

Edit: With the pots, the devs would have to figure out how to stop the pots from bugging when only partial stacks are taken. Having 30-40 regular-strength pots or oddly colored night sights (bugged necro pots) wouldn't do much good. Same goes for petals turning into feathers, and red leaves turning into birds. No good.

Yeah, I'd love to see quest items stealable, especially the tough ones to get. But people would whine so bad, it would hilarious to see a bunch of thieves waiting outside of quest areas to snag those tough items that are only able to be gotten in instanced areas...lol...la

As far as passive reveal...I don't think its too bad. Maybe a bonus at 110 or 120 stealth. But at 85 stealth you SHOULD be getting revealed quite often. Hell, they already gave us auto-stealth, which sort of made the skill over powered.

2) When you are at a champ, ONE detection is enough to blow up half an hour of wait. And you WILL get detected. Because to snoop packs you have to move, and if you move too much, you are detected (barring incredible luck). And don't get me started on shadowjump...

The solution (one of many) is easy: if you want immunity from passive detect forget autostealth, and start counting steps again. If you use stealth passively, passive detect works (actually, feel free to boost passive detection on it). If you use it ACTIVELY (with all the trouble of skill timer, counting steps, etc), PASSIVE detect does not work (at least not 40 (no skill invested) vs 120 + 150 +100). Makes sense, isn't it?

Stratics VeteranAlumni

I didn't make my comment in argument with what you stated in your previous post. If anything, I rather agree with what you're saying. But, require higher amounts of stealth. These dang Adv. char token thieves are already too powerful.

I like your idea with snooping. This way the damned stealth archers still get revealed, but the people who actually NEED to stay hidden stand a chance of doing so. *thumbs up*

Active stealth giving you a bonus would be nice, but there should always be a chance to reveal.

I do have to disagree with you on the random steals, though. That just gives pseudo-thieves one more reason to NOT have snooping. The more snooping is encouraged, the better.

Active stealth giving you a bonus would be nice, but there should always be a chance to reveal.

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I think that if being undetected is so important for you that you actually take the trouble to count steps and dedicate 220 + 100 points to stealth/snooping, you should be undetected against anybody who doesn't take the trouble to dedicate some skill points to it. In essence, not immune to passive detect, but immune to all _0_ dedicated points passive detection. Again, I present the example of the champ where a single detection can blow half an hour of cover, and a perfect gameplay on your part. It's not one missed swing with the sword, it's half an hour blown up by a single unlucky check. Different situation would be if some people were picking up GM detect, in which case I would expect to be detected.

I do have to disagree with you on the random steals, though. That just gives pseudo-thieves one more reason to NOT have snooping. The more snooping is encouraged, the better.

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*scratches head*.. You actually have a good point there. I merely listed all the stealing-related bugs I could think of, but what you say makes sense. If OTHER things gets fixed (namely the ability to snoop targets), I don't care about random steals (I don't think I ever used them, except to test how they work).

Stealth+Hiding+Ddex vs Eval Int+Detect Hidden+Int = percentage of passive detect. It should never be higher than 50%...la

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Rico, you admit you play on siege, where you have no passive detect. Do you realize what you are proposing? Your proposal makes things much harder than they currently are.

Currently: stealth + dex = 270 vs detect = 40 (elf), which with wilki's changes have been additionally scaled down for people with GM stealing. Stealthing close to an elf leads no more than 10% detection chance per step.

The probability of passive detect in itself is not very high. But the problem with passive detection is two-fold:

1) it's a repeated check. Every step you get, you risk detection. As every course of probablity theory teaches, the compounded probability of obtaining a SINGLE detection becomes fairly high (above 50%) after few steps even if the component probability is low. It's an exponential increment. Being a thief, you cannot avoid taking steps since you must be at contact to snoop, and you must take many steps to snoop many people.

2) The check is taken for every person around. Since the detection radius is 4 tiles that means lots of concurrent check for every step. The same reasoning about compounded probabilities written above applies. Now, an objection I often hear is that stealthing close to many people should take more risk of detection. While in principle I agree, this argument is one-sided. On the same principle I should be able to follow you to your house, wait for you to lower your guard, get close to you when you are alone and attack/steal. But things do not work in this way. Features like recall to trammel, inability to track past server lines, private houses, etc, leave very small windows of opportunity and they always happen in the middle of the crowd. To balance things you should either relax passive detect or relax private houses. I suspect, Regine, that you find the former alternative more viable.

As a PvP thief I hate stalking a group for ages, then being revealed as soon as I attempt to reach snooping distance.

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Yes. Regine, this is the crux of the matter. What irks thieves so much is not that they fail the steal. The problem is the fact that a single reveal sends ages of perfect stalking down the drain. It was already bad enough when it was your fault, but in that case you took it as a lesson for the future. But now it's just a RNG whim, which is frustrating and nothing else.

Stratics Veteran

Yes. Regine, this is the crux of the matter. What irks thieves so much is not that they fail the steal. The problem is the fact that a single reveal sends ages of perfect stalking down the drain. It was already bad enough when it was your fault, but in that case you took it as a lesson for the future. But now it's just a RNG whim, which is frustrating and nothing else.

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Amen to that. I stalk some group doing a spawn for a while, then once it's about to pop up, I walk up to one person, and bam, revealed. Not to detect skill, but that auto-detect junk. The elf character wasn't even close either.

Ok just from any stand point of playing a thief. First off potions should be for alchemists. No matter how rare, they may seem to be, the ones that were mentioned don't seem very worth while to me.

Just some ideas on the stealing from the monster front-

1. Have a precentage chance to steal a worthy piece of armor or weapon.

2. Tie in the snooping skill, while I know its probably not realistic considering the way loot is generated upon the death of monsters, it would however be cool to be able to snoop the monster and steal an item. But if thats not possibly, then at the very least allow snooping skill to increase your chances of stealing something good.

3. Bandages, and scrolls, are useless, even though thats what we've had to resort to in pvp, theres really no reason a thief would steal such crap.

4. Why not some lower end arti's? Say like a ring of invisibility, or bracelt of teleporting, etc.. We already had these items in game, and now most have been used up, or hidden away in chests in some vets castle. I couldn't see small items like that being overpowering, and would be better than a potion.

On a pvp front, while insurance, may not be going anywhere could there atleast be a limit imposed on the number of items your character can have insured? To be fair 1. head piece, 2. gorget, 3. arms, 4. gloves, 5. chest, 6. legs, 7. shield, 8. weapon, 9. talisman, 10. any one other item. So if the limit on insurance was 10 items, then thieves might have a little more to steal.

Heck if it could be coded it would be a limit of 10 items in felucca only, anyone entering via recall, moongate, etc. That had more than the total 10 allowed would recieve a warning message, that they couldn't go to felucca with out dropping insured items in the bank first.

Also will there be any fixes for stealth? I posted this in another thread, but i'll add it here, as it applies to fixing thieves.

I have a solution. Remove passive reveal. Make revealing require the skills detect, and tracking.

Then set a timer for any character, who chooses to flag on another individual. If you flag and go into war mode, you would get the same message you'd recieve when trying to use moongates, or recalling. Thou may not hide while in combat, or some such message. I would say atleast 1minute should be enough.

(also invis spell and pots can work, but that in itself needs fixed, to where you would still need to use the hiding skill to go into stealth mode, which by the flagging timer, wouldn't be allowed, so while you may get the invis spell off, you'd wouldn't be able to stealth away)

This timer would not apply to anyone who didn't flag. It could also only be negated by a smokebomb/ninja skill set. I say this, because i believe if your a ninja, you then have 3 skills invested in your ability to stealth, and hide. And only by having the ninja skill, and required smokebomb could you then hide again and use stealth while in combat.

But then at that point, we could adjust or fix ninja skill to require 80 points to use smokebombs. By making a 3rd skill for the gimps to have to continue playing and using their cheap tactics, will severly cramp or require an overhall of their character templates.

This to me is the most logical of fixes. It should allow thieves to thrive to the best of their abilities in an insurance world, allow ninjas to operate freely, allow sneaks, dungeon crawlers, etc.. to go about their buisness, and put a slow down, or decrease in the amount of stealth attackers, or at the very least it would require them to take more skill points away from their combat abilities.

I have 90 snooping, and burgulars bandana. At the same time I like random steal, but it is broken. And should be fixed, half the time people aren't standing still for very long, so getting a snoop in, isn't always possible. But if theres an item thats stealable, then random steal should locate it, and not check against insured and blessed stuff.

3. If a stack of something is over 12 stones, then at least give us a chance to get some of it. Currently if it's over 12 stones, no chance for you.

4. I don't really care for the random stealing, but hey to each his own. Instead of always getting the message "You can't steal this item", have it ignore everything that is blessed. Or better yet, PK's get the insurance money for killing someone, why don't we get the insurance money for stealing it?

5. I agree with Rico above, we don't need special items created just for thieves.

6. Disarm stealing. At one point in time I had to invest 300 skill points to be able to do this. That's a lot of points invested to disarm steal. Heck even if it comes back in limited form, it's better then nothing.

Stratics Veteran

I haven't actually played my thief since 2001, so my experiences in the whole stealing vs insurance area is very weak at best, but I was wondering:

Would it be a possibility to only be able to insure an item at-or-near a bank? If it were possible, then anything which spawns from the spawning, like 10th anniversary artifacts or the new replicas would be stealable until the other players can get to a bank.

I have 90 snooping, and burgulars bandana. At the same time I like random steal, but it is broken. And should be fixed, half the time people aren't standing still for very long, so getting a snoop in, isn't always possible. But if theres an item thats stealable, then random steal should locate it, and not check against insured and blessed stuff.

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Personally, I'd like to see random stealing go away. If you can't get the time to snoop and steal an item, the mark should win, not the other way around. If they changed it to the way you want, there would be a bunch of thieves without snooping running around random stealing items...what the fun is there in that?...la

Stratics VeteranStratics Legend

What about stealing item properties? An attempt to steal would prompt a list of all current item mods on an opponent. Then a thief could then steal one of those mods temporarily gaining the effect. So you would debuff another char and buff yourself at the same time.

Put a time limit scaled to thief skill on the property then everything returns to normal or force the wielder of the lost property item to go to a claims adjuster to return the item to normal for a fee if they didnt want to wait out the time limit.

Scale the intensity and number of mods stolen to skill. Add an "owned by <thief name>" tag to the item property when viewing properties of the affected item. Allow the stolen property to go over the hard cap. Would that be an advantage fighting a mage or melee or tamer? To steal a mage weapon, Use best weapon or +skill property?

Since we have insurance and it isn't going away, it should be made to work in our favour, somewhat. We have insurance versus death, we should have insurance versus theft.

Suggestion #1

For insured items, if they're the target of a theft..

..the item is auto-banked by the mark, taken out of the gameplay as per a real theft.
..the thief gets a token amount of gold, say 5k
..the mark gets penalised double, 10k (to prevent this being farmed)

Basically from that you get your token spoils, the item removed from the pvp situation (such as disarm/steal), plus the mark has a decent reason to hunt you down.

Something would have to be put in place to prevent this being used as a bag-of-sending type mechanic, perhaps disabling the item (can't be worn, equipped, or double-clicked for a cool-down period) rather than auto-banking.

Suggestion #2

Perhaps thieves could undo the insurance on a mark's item via a steal attempt, cross-checked with snooping skill for success. Uninsure an item, (mark gets a text warning to that effect), then attempt to steal it again for the actual theft.

Stratics Veteran

I think they are on the right track with temporary cursed replicas. The problems are that stealth and passive reveal are a luck of the draw system. When Age of Shadows came out powerscrolls were cursed and I know i made alot of coin off of them by stealing them. While for the most part we could no longer steal too many things from players, powerscrolls were their and with the stealth and reveal rules it was a fair system. A skilled thief could have alot of fun but marks also had many ways of ACTIVELY looking for and revealing thieves. It was a pretty balanced system where a skilled thief could be rewarded for his efforts. Still, the reveal spell, low skilled tracking(actually had to be actively used) and area effect spells, purple pots etc were all viable anti thief tactics. A skilled thief had ways of being patient and keeping a distance from players they knew were actually using tracking and area effects until it was time to move in for the theft.

Samurai Empire Empire came out and effectively made the stealth skill WAY OVERPOWERED by making hidden players unrevealable to just about anything short of actually having the detct hidden skills. Under these new rules stealing powerscrolls was ridiculously easy. With little to no way of revealing a thief wearing a 25 plus hp regen suit hiding and stealth were almost like being invulnerable. I admit I milked it for all it was worth and by rough estimates raked in close to 250 mill in scrolls. It was fun yes but in reality was way overpowered. I did well with the previous system but it took more thieving knowhow and cunning than during samurai empire. This era also gave birth to the way overpowered stealth archer. Because of stealth archers in this era changes to passive detect were made once Mondains Legacy came out.

The changes made during ML to elves passively revealing thieves basicly killed what was left of the hardcore thieves in UO. By simply doing a quest players could basicly now just stand around in a group literaly doing nothing with no cares in the world when it came to thieves. Also i believe this is when new area effect rules made area spells very useful in combating stealthers. The reintrodction of area spells to reveal thieves was a good change. I have no problem whatsoever with active use of game mechanics being used to hunt down thieves. It used to be(long ago even) and should be a thief and a mark using tactics to counter one another. Those tactics should be ACTIVE and nolt PASSIVE. Players should not be rewarded for simply standing around like cattle. That is essentially what 0 skill passive detect is.

Now, what should be done to fix or at least make thieves viable again? Lower skill requirements to actually track stealthers should be reintroduced. Like i said earlier, a skilled and determined thief will find clever ways of staying out of range of this and requires nohow. As a thief Ive never gotten mad when another player has used good game mechanics against me. Props to that player. Making it a bit easier to track stealthers also make it so that a thief cant simply hide stealth off and be gone foeverer with thier loot. This makes "the chase" much more viable. This also applies to stealth archers that basicly use hiding and stealth as a way of taking pop shots and cheap kills with little to know possibilty of retaliation from other players. I would also make the reveal spell a little more viable by basicly making it work against hiding and stealth as long as its an accurate targeting of the tile or maybe a small radius of tiles where the stealther is. For the thief its all about the element of surprise. If a thief is revealed his gig is basicly up. Make players actively pursue stealthers, dont let a template or a quest do for a player.

Now finally as far as loot for thieves. the replicas are a good start. As I said powerscrolls have always been something valuable to both marks and thieves alike. Therefore scroll situations are a lure for thieves. Add cursed replicas that have a cool down time before being insurable and you dangle another carrot for thieves. These replicas(like scrolls) should only be found in consentual pvp areas. The whole purpose of scrolls being cursed was to give people loot to fight over and leave leave something for thieves as opposed to just dry looting peoples suits etc. in a consentual manner. Specific replicas could be a boon to these pvp area(basicly spawn areas as it is).

Fix the problems with the stealth system and dangle a carrot and return the fun of sneakiness, deception and the chase and this is one thief that would be happy.

Stratics Veteran

Active stealth giving you a bonus would be nice, but there should always be a chance to reveal.

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I am not sure if you have ever been a spawn thief but let me tell you that it was one of the tougher things in the game before they messed up stealth. Now it is friggin impossible unless you catch a complete moron.

This is how I used to steal at spawns with my friend (note: this was before ninjitsu):

1) My friend and I had a character named and dressed exactly same.
2) We would scout the spawn for a good half an hour and watch how everyone was behaving. Our target was to hit the protector. Usually, the person protecting does not hit the champ and even tries to hide. (sometimes if they are multiclienting then they go hide him somewhere - which would make life somewhat easy).
3) As the boss is getting close to dying, one of us would snoop the protectors pack and stay close to him (while praying that snooping does not fail)
4) Boss dies, and you usually get a window of few seconds to check the scrolls and steal one. This is a fairly tough part and if they suspect that a thief is around it becomes impossible because they will take all sorts of available countermeasures.
5) Steal the scroll and then try to hide again using special ability or whatever else.
6) My friend pops out of hiding and puts them on a chase. I walk away.

On a good day we would get maybe two 120's after stalking a dozen or so spawns. The toughest part for us was shadowing the protector without revealing that you were around. If they suspect that you are around they have a lot of tools to rat you out (area spells, poison fields, etc.) Even if they don't suspect the smart ones will take the precautions anyways making it very unlikely that you will steal.

Now, with passive detect it is just ridiculously dumb. You just get butchered and laughed at with no hope. I don't think that what me and my friend used to do was "overpowering." The passive detect was always meant as a nerf of pesky stealth archers and spawn thiefs got screwed as a side-effect. NOT MANY complained because there were not many who bothered to be a spawn thief (as it was not so lucrative). However, it certainly lowered the risk of doing spawns and further diluted the risk in the risk vs. reward argument of fel.

Stratics VeteranAlumni

9/10 I get sent packing with whatever random scroll I can grab while being attacked by everyone...but every once in a while I get my pick of the protector's scrolls.

Hell, the other day I nabbed a +20 stat without even using stealth. Same almost went for a 120 magery, but I missed the grab by about... 1/10th of a second. Ahh, the one that got away. :/

The fact that most thieves quit or went to Siege just made it easier.

You wont find trackers/detectors in fel outside of faction bases, anymore. I am not saying passive reveal doesn't need to be tweaked. Quite the contrary. I just don't see a need in completely taking the fun and challenge out of it by practically requiring a tracker/detector to find you.

Now, what should be done to fix or at least make thieves viable again? Lower skill requirements to actually track stealthers should be reintroduced. Like i said earlier, a skilled and determined thief will find clever ways of staying out of range of this and requires nohow. As a thief Ive never gotten mad when another player has used good game mechanics against me. Props to that player. Making it a bit easier to track stealthers also make it so that a thief cant simply hide stealth off and be gone foeverer with thier loot. This makes "the chase" much more viable. This also applies to stealth archers that basicly use hiding and stealth as a way of taking pop shots and cheap kills with little to know possibilty of retaliation from other players. I would also make the reveal spell a little more viable by basicly making it work against hiding and stealth as long as its an accurate targeting of the tile or maybe a small radius of tiles where the stealther is. For the thief its all about the element of surprise. If a thief is revealed his gig is basicly up. Make players actively pursue stealthers, dont let a template or a quest do for a player.

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I agree on the principle, but I have an issue with the tracking implementation suggested. Specifically I don't think the tracking changes are required, actually I think they would be detrimental because they remove any advantage at all in having a tracker in the group. While a single player is unlikely to track a thief, a group of people using joat tracking can easily find the thief. A single tracking attempt has on average 11% chance to find a fully skilled stealther. That means that 3 people have 30% chance to find him with a single tracking attempt and no dedicated skills. 3 people with two tracking attempts, or 6 people with a single attempt already have 50% chance (better than a full tracker, without any skill points dedicated). Two tracking attempts of 6 people goes as up as 75% chance to find the thief. I have been tracked plenty of times by organized people without tracking/detect. It just requires, as you said, to have "players actively pursue stealthers". Playing both sides of the issue, thief and tracker, I think that currently tracking is one of the few balanced things in this game.

As for the rest of your suggestions I don't really have much to criticize, except that I have what I think might be a more effective suggestion: in normal conditions there shouldn't be passive detection of a fully skilled stealther (different argument could be made for 180 stealthers) and all other things should be as they are now, but if a character sees a stealther, or experiences a pushthrough on the stealther, or is lucky enough to track him, that character gets a huge bonus (100/100?) to detect and tracking against that stealther for two full minutes. Which means that: using active detection will reveal the stelther 50% times, using the reveal spell will reveal the stealther 50% times, using tracking will give him a 50% chance to get him, and you will have passive detection enabled on that stealther.

In essence you are good until nobody sees you, but if you make a mistake and somebody sees you bets are over, you better scramble fast.

9/10 I get sent packing with whatever random scroll I can grab while being attacked by everyone...but every once in a while I get my pick of the protector's scrolls.

....

The fact that most thieves quit or went to Siege just made it easier. You wont find trackers/detectors in fel outside of faction bases, anymore.

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Those two sentences explain each other. It happened to me as well, very recently. I recently reopened my account, so first thing I do is to hit a champ spawn to see how things are for thieves. Well, honestly, I blundered it badly, made every mistake in the book (two years of inactivity will do that... ) and still I came out of it with a +20 swords!!! I was astounded by the level of cluelessness reached by those champ hunters. Then I go to a champ done by decent pvpers, and I see that it is impossible to steal anything from them.

The problem here is that when you manage to get something good, it is because of other people total carelessness, and your ability doesn't count much. I find that frustrating, but that's just me. Post AoS, when you had to count steps but no auto-passive detect was in place your ability was much more important. If people wanted to have passive detect they would dedicate 20 points to detect. I did so. Other pvp guilds I know did that too.

These are rehashes of previous posts, but seconding them only reinforces the point that the devs should put them back.

Allow anything unblessed/uninsured/unquest to be stealable. Don't tell me something has no value.. let me be the judge of that.

Allow containers to be stolen. If people have enough blessed/insured items that they need to store them in sack within a pack, they are carrying too many. Blessed and insured items were meant to be important, not backpack jewelry for thieves to gawk over.

Increase the stealing weight limit. It should probably be doubled. Reduce the chance for items over 15 stone weight or whatever.. but it should always be possible, if not probable.

Allow portions of stacks to be stealable. This is only possible with empty flasks from my experience.. thieves should be able to steal gold/regs etc. from any sized stack.

Why do I get passively detected by mongbats on Siege? I'm sure this annoys people everywhere on all shards where supposedly dumb monsters detect stealthers.

Make the thief guild a semi-guild.. with steal points based on item value and/or weight visible to all thieves. This could be abused, but honorable thieves would enjoy seeing a ranking amongst them, as the cheaters would be found out over time.

Stratics Veteran

Please to restore the disguise kit! The use of it cancels ninja animal forms for escape. Why can't the individual change from alias to animal? Or alias to necro creature?
And please to allow the stealing of more weight.

Allow a thief with the proper disarm skill, select an armor item to attempt to take off a player. If it's unblessed and it's is successfully disarmed...it should be able to be stolen. Maybe put a timer on the amount of armor disarms can be allowed (to prevent thieves from striping our marks completely), but at least this would open up some items we have never been able to steal before.

On this note, put back the abiltiy to disarm steal players shields. For the short time we were able to do this, was a lot of fun. You could even allow spellbooks to be disarmed. If a player is too slow to re-arm the spell book before we are able to disarm the shield...we should have the chance to take the shield as our own. This isn't a request to get spell books stealable (even though it would be nice). Just because you have an item in your hands, should not prevent all chances to disarm and then steal any item...la

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I dont like the idea of armor disarming.

I mean cmon, get just a little realistic. If someone attacks you with a knife, you could potentially take it from them and use it on them. But ive never seen any kind of martial arts master that could defend themselves and remove your pants at the same time.

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